Over-Dwelling

QA188 QUESTION: As of late, I’ve been withdrawing with quite a bit of rejection of the outside world, and it’s beginning to have its effect on me. I feel I didn’t get any roots in early childhood and was in a rather nasty psychic field. Also I had quite a few operations. The mood of my childhood is an existential nausea, a sort of sickening feeling when I go back into the childhood itself. I’m trying to get a feeling of being in my body and having my feet on the ground, but if I ever get that, the perception of my childhood will not be adequate for it. So could you find the problem and tell me how to get out of this dilemma?

ANSWER: Well, my advice is the following. You do know about your childhood as much as it is necessary and even advisable for you to know at this moment. Because an over-dwelling on the childhood removes you from finding that point in yourself that you need in order to gain security, in order to trust in yourself, in order to become whole, in order to find your real nucleus.

I do not say that the understanding of childhood conditions should be negated totally. That is, of course, not possible or not feasible. It should be understood; it must be discussed in the course of one’s search for one’s self. But this over-dwelling at this point is not beneficial for you, because where your real problem lies is not what happened to you in your childhood, but how you interpreted it, and how you still interpret it, and what you do with it at this moment. That is the problem.

The problem lies in your negating the responsibility on the emotional level. I do know you pay lip service to it intellectually, but emotionally you keep on blaming and accusing and feeling victimized, and being very rebellious and wanting to punish everyone. You do know, you do admit it, at times you even feel it, but then you forget and you indulge in this attitude. And this is what keeps you from being secure. This is what decentralizes you.

Each time you observe yourself doing this, if you know it and acknowledge it, already the damage will lessen. In other words, if you can say to yourself, “Oh, here I am blaming, condemning, punishing, making myself helpless by what happened to me in my childhood, and by what I accuse them of having done to me.” If you can acknowledge it in this way, already an inner basis of security will be established.

Now, I know that this always seems the most difficult thing for a human being to do. Almost all human beings, with very few exceptions, find anything preferable to doing this. They even prefer to go on miserably suffering in life, and forgetting that their true suffering is really because of indulging in this attitude.

They prefer to do that rather than say, “I can choose another attitude now. I do not have to go on blaming and accusing” – and perhaps pray for an instant, “What would be the right vision? How could I view my parents, my family when I was a child – how could I view them now? How could I see the truth?”

You cannot perhaps find the answer with your mind. But if you pray for it, if you truly want to see, some inspiration will come that will suddenly put a different focus, a different proportion on the way things are. This will give you a real power – not the childish power, not power to hurt and blame and punish, which always includes the self-destruction – but the power to expand constructively and let bygones truly be bygones – not by looking away from them and repressing them but by coming to terms with them. This is the only true way of gaining security. There is no other.

There is no shortcut; there is no bypassing this. In other words, self-responsibility is the price, and no matter how hard a childhood was, no matter how difficult it may have been, the attitude can be taken of: “What can I do with it now? Do I have to go on being crippled or is it in my power, by searching for a new experience of these things as I saw them until now, to see them differently?” You can want to do that and assume the responsibility to expand your life – really wanting this – on that level where punishing still goes on.

That must stop by seeing it – every day – seeing yourself, how you punish and how you blame. That is what keeps you from being secure, because this is still obscure to you. It is only a theory. It is not an inner observation. And the security can be attained if you really want this. Your life can expand if you go in this direction. Do you understand?

QUESTION: Yes I do, quite well, as a matter of fact. I’ve been holding back and releasing the illusion with people, but the negative emotions connected specifically with the child area, I’ve been hoarding them. So that plays a part.